If you know someone outside of your company who may be interested in learning more about Connections Online, we have an informational webinar scheduled on Wednesday, January 18th at 1:30 ET – Please pass this link on to them to register: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/597396162

Connections Online Migration

If you have not already done so, and are ready to migrate to 4.0, please contact Karla Norwood at 800.395.1410.

Announcing our new User Interface!

The new user interface is ready for you to try out. It is fully functioning and points to your current production site. Please note that if you are trying it out and editing the information, your edits will update your production site. The data hasn’t changed but the look of the application has. While you are trying it out, your other users can still be using the current 4.0 version. The new version will be known as version 4.1.

Here are the main changes:

The colored tabs are now all the same color so the application looks more like a Windows 7 application

All the pop-up edit boxes are gone – there are two ways to edit now. “In-line” editing, where you click on the pencil and the edit fields just “drop down” the page (similar to on-line banking when you pay a bill) or you can open the item and it opens to a full page rather than an edit window

Check boxes to move items up or down or indented or out-dented are gone. The changes to order will now be drag and drop

For any tasks (projects, basic role, personal or dialog follow-ups) you can mark them as completed just by clicking the check at the beginning of the task row -- it will update the task as completed using the current date (you don’t need to open the task unless you want to add other information, like a comment)

There is a new module on the People tab for Basic Role tasks

There is a new module on the People tab for metrics you own elsewhere in the application – they will load in this box so you can see from your People tab what you need to update

There is a new module that lists just the projects you are a member of

There is a new, simpler module listing all of your tasks (you can just click on the check mark to mark as completed)

There is new Dialog functionality – when you open a new dialog, the past dialog is on the right side of the page – click the green arrow and it automatically copies into the current agenda. This will make creating agendas so much easier. The same works for the Basic Role comments – you will see the comments from last month, just click the green arrow and they will automatically copy to the new edit window and you can edit that page accordingly.

Project Template – with this template, you can enter the project tasks into the Excel template and “send” the tasks to Connections

Basic Role Template: this allows you to create multiple Basic Roles without having to retype them i.e. Tellers, MSRs, etc. You can also enter employees using the Basic Role template

Business Case Template: after you enter information in the Business Case Template, you can sync with Connections and it will update the project without having to retype the information into the application

Business Case and Project Task Template: this template has both the Business Case and the Project Task templates in one. You can fill out the business case plus the project tasks – then send to Connections and the project is all filled in

Project Connector: this is working well now. Please call if you are interested in using the MS Project Connector to run projects through Connections.

If you are interested any of these templates or the MS Project Connector, please call Karla at 800-395-1410. The templates will work with Office 2007 or 2010. They will not work with Office 2003.

If you accidentally close out of one of the modules on any of the tabs, to bring that module back into view you will need to click on the My Tab. On the bottom of the page click on “Edit Layout”. When the page opens click the “Reset” button in the upper left corner of the page in the Reset Layout section. All the modules will be in view again.